Every Man Is Responsible For His Own Soul

This blog post is not an explanation for why /r/TheFappening was banned. It is an explanation for why we will not ban questionable subreddits, of which /r/TheFappening is one of them. What happened is that we wrote the blog post, and at approximately the same time, activity in that subreddit starting violating other rules we have which do trigger a ban, so we banned it.

Those two events occurring together have created great confusion. That is: we put up a blog post explaining why we don’t ban things for reason X (which some people want us to, but we will not), but at the same time behavior in a subreddit started violating reason Y (a pre-existing and valid rule for which we do ban things) and we banned it, resulting in much confusion.

Last weekend, reddit was used as one of the primary centers of distribution of private and unlawfully obtained images of celebrities.

In accordance with our legal obligations, we expeditiously removed content hosted on our servers as soon as we received DMCA requests from the lawful owners of that content, and in cases where the images were not hosted on our servers, we promptly directed them to the hosts of those services.

While current US law does not prohibit linking to stolen materials, we deplore the theft of these images and we do not condone their widespread distribution.

Nevertheless, reddit’s platform is structurally based on the ability for people to distribute, promote, and highlight textual materials as well as links to images and other media. We understand the harm that misusing our site does to the victims of this theft, and we deeply sympathize.

Having said that, we are unlikely to make changes to our existing site content policies in response to this specific event.

The reason is because we consider ourselves not just a company running a website where one can post links and discuss them, but the government of a new type of community. The role and responsibility of a government differs from that of a private corporation, in that it exercises restraint in the usage of its powers.

While we may believe that users should behave in a certain way, the methods we use to influence that behavior fall into two different classes:

1. Actions which cause or are likely to cause imminent physical danger (e.g. suicides, instructions for self-harm, or specific threats) or which damage the integrity and ability of the site to function (e.g. spam, brigading, vote-cheating) are prohibited or enforced by “hard” policy, such as bans and rules.

2. Actions which are morally objectionable or otherwise inappropriate we choose to influence by exhortation, emphasizing positive examples, or by selectively highlighting good content and good actions. For example, this includes our selection of subreddits which populate on our default front page, subreddits we highlight in blog posts, and subreddits we promote via other media channels.

The philosophy behind this stems from the idea that each individual is responsible for his or her moral actions.

We uphold the ideal of free speech on reddit as much as possible not because we are legally bound to, but because we believe that you – the user – has the right to choose between right and wrong, good and evil, and that it is your responsibility to do so. When you know something is right, you should choose to do it. But as much as possible, we will not force you to do it.

You choose what to post. You choose what to read. You choose what kind of subreddit to create and what kind of rules you will enforce. We will try not to interfere – not because we don’t care, but because we care that you make your choices between right and wrong.

Virtuous behavior is only virtuous if it is not arrived at by compulsion. This is a central idea of the community we are trying to create.

As always, we welcome ideas on how better to achieve these aims, and we will continually evolve both our policies and actions.